Civil_War_Quarterly_-_Summer_2016_

rain, paired with the inevitable fog of war,

ensured that the Confederate thrust for the

Nashville Pike would result in uncoordi-

nated butchery.

Ector, whose hard-fighting Texans had

enjoyed such success earlier in the morn-

ing, went forward unsupported across

open ground. Waiting for the veteran Tex-

ans were green Union troops. In his des-

peration to fill gaps along the Nashville

Pike, Rosecrans had ordered up Brig. Gen.

John Morton’s Pioneer Brigade, an engi-

neering outfit expected to see little action.

The Pioneers were supported by Battery B,

Pennsylvania Light Artillery, and Captain

James Stokes’s Chicago Board of Trade

Battery. Raised and equipped by patriotic

Chicago commodities traders, the men of

the battery had yet to see a serious fight.

The Texans streamed across the open

ground but soon found themselves in a

tight spot. Slugging it out with the Pioneer

Brigade, Ector’s right, lashed by artillery

fire, took the worst of it. The Texans’ left

fared even worse. Their flank was unpro-

tected by supporting units, and Colonel

Samuel Beatty’s Union brigade pitched into

their left. The bitter struggle ultimately left

the Federals master of the field after Ector,

reluctantly, pulled his men out.

Beatty, along with Colonel James Fyffe’s

brigade, followed close on the heels of the

routed Texans but ran into unexpected

resistance of their own when they neared

the cedars. It was Cleburne’s division,

stretching far beyond the Federal flank.

The doughty Arkansan wasted little time

in throwing his men at the overextended

Yankees. Faced with overwhelming pres-

sure, Colonel Charles Harker pulled his

Federal brigade back to protected ground

far off Fyffe’s right. For Fyffe and Beatty,

the move was a disaster. Swiftly edging

past Fyffe, Cleburne’s veterans tore into the

exposed Federal flank and unhinged the

two brigades. Panic-stricken Yankees fled

in confusion, and Cleburne’s entire division

headed for the final prize—possession of

the Nashville Pike.

In the face of looming catastrophe, Rose-

crans scooped up every available regiment

and threw them into line. In what the pious

general could only have regarded as a mir-

acle, the threat inexplicably evaporated. As

astonished Confederate brigadiers watched

in amazement, their vaunted regiments

broke and fled for the rear in considerable

confusion. Liddell, for his part, was out-

raged by the sudden collapse of the Con-

federate attack. “The movement was totally

unexpected,” reported the Louisianan,

“and I have yet to learn that there exists a

cause commensurate with the demoraliza-

tion that ensued.” Cleburne was more sym-

pathetic to the plight of his weary foot sol-

diers. Running low on ammunition and

unsupported by artillery, Cleburne noted

that his men “had little or no rest the night

before; they had been fighting since dawn,

without relief, food, or water.” Quite sim-

ply, they had reached the limits of human

endurance.

Bragg was nonetheless determined to

break the enemy once and for all. Rather

than redouble his efforts against the shat-

tered Federal left, Bragg focused his ener-

gies on the right, where, he thought, Rose-

crans’s remaining flank was invitingly

situated for a crushing blow. The prickly

army chief was hopeful that a final drive

against the weakened Federal left would

achieve a decisive breakthrough, seize the

Nashville Pike, and occasion the complete

disintegration of the Army of the Cumber-

land. Bragg, however, would face fierce

resistance in the form of a particularly stub-

born Federal brigade under the command

of Colonel William B. Hazen.

A hard-bitten Old Army man, Hazen had

In another Travis sketch, a momentarily unflappable

Rosecrans, right, peers through binoculars at the

fighting while Confederate artillery shells explode

amid Union artillery in the foreground.

CWQ-Sum16 Stones River_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:46 PM Page 91